


To Hear A Hand

by tsurai



Category: Star Trek (2009), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Deaf Character, Deaf!Jim, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 15:56:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsurai/pseuds/tsurai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James T. Kirk's birth is a medical impossibility. Deafness was supposedly cured two centuries ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Formative Years, Part I

Jacob Ono always wanted to be a doctor. Doctors saved lives and cared for others, unlike the people he knew that were immersed in drugs and violence. He grew up in the slums of a rundown New York City, always dreaming big, always taking advantage of his meager education and pushing it to new limits. Starfleet was his golden opportunity. All you needed was smarts and a steady hand, and you could rise to a medic someday. It was the perfect place for a poor boy with disinterested parents, no options and no place to go. Jacob learned quickly, earning praise from his instructors and a small amount of jealousy from his peers, until _finally_ he was assigned as a medic to the Fleet ship _USS Kelvin_.

 

“George, you should be here!” Doctor Ono did his best to ignore Mrs. Kirk’s cries, just held her hand while Nurse Gen chanted - _pushpushpush_. The birth was already difficult, and though he and the nurses could sense the death looming moments away from them, they had to focus. Winona was a healthy young woman, but her distress made the birth harder on all of them.

 

He felt horrible but tried to be calm, overseeing a birth in the middle of a mission that in hindsight had so obviously been a trap. George Kirk was the Acting Captain - the former was dead. Jacob felt a cold spot twisting his gut. Terror, for himself and his nurses and the mother that may not survive to see through the birth of her child.

 

“No, George, I’m not leaving you!” She was crying in the small space between contractions; Jacob’s hands shook. He met Gen’s enormous tilted eyes - she was near the precipice of breaking down, the same as he. He looked down to see a small head emerge, a tuft of hair matted down by blood on top. At Gen’s nod he pressed the eject button. Winona’s harsh cry of despair rang in the tiny capsule, but was quickly overpowered by a long, high wail. Nurse Gen was there in an instant, cleaning the baby’s nose and mouth and the majority of his skin with efficient movements and checking the sex before gently placing it in Mrs. Kirk’s waiting arms.

 

The boy was dubbed James Tiberius Kirk, after his grandfathers. In that moment everyone in the transport understood just what George Kirk sacrificed for them. There was silence on the other end of the com.

 

The silence of space and death.

 

Winona was weeping softly, cuddling the boy to her chest when Jacob finally regained enough sense to look the child over. Gen made soothing noises, loosening Winona’s arms enough for Jacob to unwrap the blanket. _Ten fingers, ten toes, so far so good._ The thought tasted of bitterness. One birth amidst so much death.

 

He pulled out his medical tricorder - the pregnancy had gone as well as could be expected, but he always had to check for unseen complications - even dismissing the stress of the birth. He scrutinized the readings as the sensor passed over chubby curled legs and a plump red belly, but everything was fine; a healthy baby, then. Jacob nearly sighed in relief. He passed the sensor over the boy’s head, fully expecting to see nothing out of the ordinary.

 

James Kirk opened his eyes then, far too early for a newborn child. The blue of the gaze was so intense it nearly drove Jacob to miss the small blip in the tricorder’s readings. He paused, stock still and eyes darting between the screen and the boy. He scanned again, then once more. _No, this can’t be right._

 

But the results were there, plain as a giant star on the small screen.

 

Jacob choked down the urge to start crying himself. He couldn’t test the results manually without distressing the mother, which was the last thing he wanted to do in this situation. The doctor turned away from the now-nursing babe. He knew he was only imagining the accusing look in those bright eyes. The boy had no sense of what he was missing and would never blame him, he knew. He hoped.

 

Hope didn’t stop his long shuddering sigh, half-choked and disbelieving. This wasn’t supposed to be possible anymore - someone should have caught it early on in the pregnancy. Her attending doctor, caught in the first volley of explosions, should have seen the readings and taken preventative steps. Too late now.

 

_“Just keep breathing, you’ll be fine!”_

_“And the baby too, right?”_

_“...And the baby too.”_

 

He wished he could eat his words - they were so horribly ironic in the pain of this situation.

 

Little James Tiberius Kirk would grow up never knowing his father or the sound of his mother’s voice.

 

Jacob’s hands were shaking again.

 

* * *

 

In the early days of his life, Jimmy could only recall a few things specifically. He remembered soft hands against his face and a woman with golden hair who was warm and safe. She looked him straight in the face and pressed her lips together, then in a round open circle, and together again. Jimmy only stared at her, not sure what she wanted. She did it again and again and again, until finally the little boy realized she wanted him to imitate her. He tried, screwing up his face really hard. The woman smiled at him this time, but shook her head. She took his chubby hands in her soft ones, pressing them to her throat. She did the thing with her lips again, but this time Jimmy felt a vibration beneath his hands, under her skin. Jim grinned - he was a bright child and he could figure it out.

 

He made the movements with his mouth, this time adding the vibration thing. It made his throat tickle like it sometimes did when he scraped his knees on the gravel or found his favorite bear in its hiding place.

 

The woman shook her head it again. He did it wrong? Jimmy tried again, then another time. Each time the woman’s smile faltered little more. Jim didn’t understand - he was doing everything the way she did! Why wasn’t she happy with him? Finally she pulled away - her warm hands leaving his cheeks cold - and stood. Jimmy felt all twisted and funny inside.

 

That night Jim tossed and turned in his little bed in his little room in his corner of the house. He did the movements and the funny humming over and over, trying to do it like the woman did. He touched his face to make sure his mouth was right.

 

Someday he _would_ do it right, and the safe, warm woman would smile at him for it.

 

* * *

 

Jim was sulking in the corner, put there by the woman. He didn’t understand what was wrong this time. The woman and the boy taller than him were just standing around doing the lip-moving thing, and Jim needed a glass from the tall cabinet, which only the woman could reach. But however he moved, they just kept on looking at each other. So he made the hum and the lip-moves too, hoping to get their attention. It wasn’t enough, so he did it again. It made Jim’s throat hurt, but he kept doing it. He banged a fist into the counter too - Jim didn’t know why he needed to do the lip-flapping thing to get them to look at him. He shouldn’t have to, and they shouldn’t do it either. Jim couldn’t see the point! They turned toward him, finally.

 

The woman got red all over when he chipped the paint on the low cabinet. Her mouth was open wide a lot then, and Jim could see all her teeth. She was scary all of a sudden, so he didn’t fight when she dragged him to the corner of the living room and sat him down on the floor. Jimmy puffed out his cheeks and stared at the ground, feeling the hum of the wood at each stomping step she took away from him. She was angry. He was angry too! All he wanted was a glass of water.

 

Jimmy sat around for what seemed like a long time, but it was probably a short time before the other boy walked into the room and sat down next to him. He stubbornly didn’t look at the boy for a long while - this was partly his fault! If he hadn’t been distracting the woman, Jim wouldn’t have gotten in trouble for trying to get her attention.

 

His stubbornness was interrupted abruptly by the other boy shoving a pad of paper in his face. Jim stared at it for a moment, but the only thing on it was a few penciled squiggles.

 

_SAM._ Jim looked at the boy; were the squiggles supposed to make sense to him somehow? The boy’s brow furrowed, and then he wrote the same squiggles again. He pointed at the squiggles, then himself, and made lip-movement. Jim blinked - he was still confused, though it was obvious the boy was trying to get something across. All anger was forgotten in lieu of overwhelming curiosity when the boy’s eyebrows shot up excitedly. He drew a few more squiggles.

 

_JIM._ He tapped the new shapes with his pencil, then pointed it at Jimmy and made a new lip-thing. Then he tapped the _SAM_ squiggles and pointed the pencil at himself and did the other lip-movement. Jimmy scowled at the paper and the boy, trying to figure out what was going on. Something niggled in the back of his young mind, but Jimmy couldn’t quite get it. The woman walked into the room, picking something up off the floor.

 

The other boy straightened, tapping the _JIM_ squiggles and pointing at him, then the _SAM_ shapes and pointing at himself. Finally, he scribbled down a few new symbols, then pointed his pencil at the woman and made yet another slow lip-movement. It took a moment for Jim to recognize as the one he’d tried to practice so many times before. The little boy looked down at the newest scribble.

 

_MOM_.

 

He looked up at the woman. He tried the mouth move he’d practiced. The woman turned with wide eyes, then smiled at Jimmy.

 

The room exploded around him. Like two separate bridges building on opposite banks and finally meeting in the middle, Jim finally connected what the woman and the boy had been trying to teach him.

 

Words. A way to communicate. _Names_.

 

They weren’t just the taller boy and the woman anymore. They were Mom and Sam.

 

And his name was Jim.

 

* * *

 

 

When Jim was really young and learning about words for the first time, a man in a blue shirt came around quite a few times. He had dark hair and almond eyes and a kind face, and Jim liked him a lot. He always brought Jim and Sam toys and books, even back when Jim didn’t know the squiggles were letters and there was a whole alphabet out there that would help him connect to others. When Jim showed him the little pad of paper, he smiled and wrote _JAKE_ on it. Jim decided he liked Jake’s smile and climbed up in the man’s lap.

 

Mom never smiled when the Jake came around. She always looked at the floor and slowly walked away when he came in the door. It didn’t matter though, ‘cause he was only around for a day at a time and Sam liked him too, so he must be alright. Sam and Jim both gravitated to him, which led to Jake teaching them to read and write. Sam was older, so he already knew some words from school. Occasionally the scribbles he learned from school and showed Jim made Mom turn red and get angry. She always tore the paper up and made Sam sit in the corner when she saw them.

 

Jake gave him a little black thing that looked kind of like a book with a little black stick. The book-thing had a blue screen with lines on it, and Jim soon discovered that he could scribble and erase on it with the black stick. Jake gave one to Sam too, to stop him from getting jealous, and made Jim copy down what he soon learned were ‘letters.’

 

_A, a...B,b...C,c..._

 

Every time Jake came over he’d check to see how Jim was doing. He taught him words, more than names like Sam and Jake and Mom, and slowly Jim began to understand. His box was a _PADD_ and the thing he slept on was a _bed_ and he lived in a _house_. When he wanted to hit Sam for taking stealing his teddy he felt _anger_ , and the color of his new bicycle was _red_.

 

For those years, Jim felt content.

 

* * *

 

 

Dr. Jacob Ono knew that Winona Kirk resented his presence. He was just as much of a reminder of her husband’s demise as her sons that looked so much like him. Still, he couldn’t leave Jim alone. He’d been there when the boy was born and he’d known from that moment on that Winona wouldn’t be able to take care of him, not properly. He was right. Four years later he’d finally managed a transfer to a shuttle ship that took supplies to colonies, with frequent shore leaves. When he tracked down Winona Kirk and her children he found a shadow of a woman, a boy barely out of toddler hood with no way to connect to the world beyond his own mind, and the older brother who was strained serving as a desperate middleman between the two.

 

She could despise him all she wished, but he was going to give them the childhood they deserved as best he could. Every few weeks he showed up at the door and Winona let him in despite all the resentment that boiled within her. He knew that in some ways she unconsciously blamed James’ condition on him, though there was nothing he could have done to cause or prevent it. Jim’s deafness was genetic and incurable. Jacob had long dismissed his incredulity that the best of modern medicine - hearing aids, gene therapy, and surgery - could do nothing to help one small child. Little Jim’s situation was supposed to be an impossibility in this day and age, and the thought of the boy leading a life of impossibilities made him chuckle.

 

Jim was a voracious learner, the curiosity that had been unsatisfied for so long bursting to the surface when he finally found a way to connect. From one visit to the next, Jim went from learning basic letters to being able to write the entire alphabet without a single malformed or out-of-order letter. Jacob fought to keep accusations out of his voice whenever he had the occasion to speak to Winona. _Do you see what you’ve done to this boy, denying him true communication because of your own hurt? Do you see what he could_ become _?_ However, he didn’t fight back a smile when he learned that Sam had taken it upon himself to teach his little brother numbers, too. The boy could count to ten on his fingers and write the numbers.

 

When Jacob came to the farmhouse that summer and found Jimmy browsing through some novels he’d brought for Sam, he knew it was time to focus the boy’s education elsewhere. Jim would be starting kindergarten that fall, and he was already going to have enough problems without another way to communicate besides writing, of which Jim only had the bare bones despite his aptitude for it.

 

As Jacob saw it, he had two options. First, he could teach the kid sign language. The Federation had a system in place for communicating with species that were otherwise incomprehensible, but Jacob only knew a few rudimentary signs barely extending beyond Standard letters and greetings. He could teach them to Jim, but otherwise they wouldn’t get the boy very far. His other option was to find a speech therapist that could teach Jim to talk and to read lips. The first problem was that Jim had only spoken two words in the entire time Jacob had been around him. The first was an attempt to make his mother smile and the second was an effort at Jake’s name. Both were horribly slurred, beyond recognition unless you already knew what he was saying. Otherwise he never released any sounds beyond the occasional grunt or whine. Jim had never heard a sound in his life, and Jacob was sure the very concept of sound was foreign to him at this point, so speech would be an issue.

 

The second problem was _finding_ a speech therapist. With this century’s revolutionary medicine, the only need for them usually stemmed from accidents that affected the mouth and tongue muscles or the central nervous system, as surgery or gene therapy in the womb cured any loss of hearing through inheritance or accident.

 

Jacob sighed, watching Sam graciously play ‘Starship’ with his little brother. Sam thought himself beyond such kiddy toys, but they both knew that the elder could never resist Jim’s puppy blues. The doctor was glad the boy didn’t turn those eyes on him or he knew _he_ would be the one crouching on the wood floor, piloting toy Fleet ships with his hands and making totally pointless and scientifically inaccurate _whooshing_ noises for Jim’s amusement.

 

The answer came when he explained his predicament to Gen, now his wife of three years and a doctor in her own right. She turned her large inky eyes on him and smiled, patting his hand gently with her dusky brown one. “Don’t worry, Jake. I have the perfect solution.”

 

The solution was a quick call to her second-cousin, an exolinguistics expert and a Standard language teacher for aliens immigrating to Earth. Jacob called up vague memories of her presence at his and Gen’s wedding ceremony when she shook his hand.

 

“Nice to see you again,” she smiled, dark skin pulling back to reveal white teeth, “My name is Nichelle Uhura.”

 


	2. Formative Years, Part II

Jacob Ono buried his face in his hands with a groan. Gen had headed out long ago for Gamma shift in the small freighter’s medbay, leaving him alone to wrestle with the prehistoric replicator the Federation had seen fit to provide them. Apparently “coffee” was too hard for the scrapheap to process, because all his attempts for the past hour had resulted in a cupful of black sludge that melted the plastic spoon he used to prod it. After the fifth such creation, Jacob gave up and dumped the slime down the drain.

                                                      

This led to him here at his desk, with nothing to occupy him until the next Beta shift. Sleep just didn’t seem viable without Gen next to him to soothe his irritation. With another grunt he turned on his personal PADD and set to pondering the cause of his irritation, the puzzle that’d been bugging him for years.

 

Six-year-old Jim Kirk was an anomaly, but a boy he had come to treat almost like his own son despite all reservations. Impossibilities seemed to flock to the kid like Vulcans to sudoku puzzles, which made him such a source of frustration.

 

Jacob brought up the fresh tricorder readings and a diagram of the inner ear he’d studied too many times to really need anymore.

 

It was almost as if the boy had been born to be deaf. The inner auditory nerves of his ear were virtually nonexistent, and all attempts to regenerate them when Jim was a baby had been met with naught but wasted energy and medical bills. This also made the old-style cochlear implants virtually useless, as they were meant to stimulate those very nerves. Jacob had done his research on another implant that sent sound impulses directly to the brain, but danger stemmed from the fact that said insertion was developed for elderly adults losing their hearing later in life. Implanting the device in the brain of a growing human boy would cause irreparable brain damage, negating any possible positive effects. And knowing Jim’s adverse allergic reaction to anything and everything injected into his little body, an implant would probably make his head explode or something.

 

Medicine just wasn’t _advanced_ enough in this field. The doctors of two-hundred years past believed they’d cured born deafness and hearing loss and saw no point in moving further, no reason for keeping back-up solutions. Sometimes Dr. Ono wished he could corner the deceased CMO of the _USS Kelvin_ and ask her what the hell she’d been thinking! She’d made a grievous error in not detecting the anomaly in the prenatal scans, a mistake that Jim would pay for continuously for the rest of his life.

 

Jacob wanted to do something to make the boy’s life easier. Gen’s cousin Nichelle Uhura was making excellent headway with lipreading and sign language, but Jim would still be impeded in the larger world. Only Starfleet and other Federation officials used sign language with any regularity, and there would be innumerable times when Jim would be unable to see the faces of those talking to him.

 

Jacob’s fingers danced across the screen, pulling up diagrams for device after device, idea after idea that he had little time or the right knowledge to devote to. He needed an engineer’s help.

* * *

 

Jim didn’t like the pretty brown lady as much as Jake. Sure, she was nice and she smiled a lot and taught him new things, but Jake knew when he got bored, and Nichelle didn’t let up when he was.

 

He closed his eyes stubbornly when she waved her hands at him - he knew all the hand letters already, just as well as his written alphabet. She wanted to do the lip-talking now, trying to teach him to be like her and Mom and Sam with their confusing moth-moving ways. Jim didn’t like trying the lip-talking - he knew he was bad at it, and why bother using “speech” when it was much less confusing to use his hands when asking for a drink of water?

 

She touched his arm. He sighed - a great gust of air that slid through his teeth - and opened his eyes. She signed slowly, fingerspelling the words he didn’t know yet.

 

 _‘Talking will make things easier.’_ Jim scowled.

 

 _‘Harder,’_ he signed, knowing she’d catch his meaning clear enough. Finally, Nichelle sank down on the grass next to him, tucking her jean-clad legs underneath her. At six, Jim barely came up to her shoulder. For several moments they simply sat on the lawn, taking in the gravel dust coating the grass with oily residue and the heady scent of the peonies Mom struggled to keep alive in the already-intense heat of the early Iowa summer. The woman raised her hand.

 

 _‘You’re going to school this fall.’_ Her lips moved with the words her hands made, finally having purpose in his eyes after so many years of watching so many years of silent babble. Jim looked away, taking in her words. Mom had held him back another year, unwilling to subject him to the scrutiny of peers and teachers. Jim was okay with that though - the only friends he needed were Sam and Jake and Nichelle, despite how much he hated the woman’s endless weekly speech drills.

 

He threaded his fingers through crunchy grass, willing himself not to cry. He didn’t want to be in a room full of people who didn’t understand. Nichelle had already told him that the vast majority of people didn’t know finger-speak. If he went, all he would have was a written alphabet and a maimed, limping voice. He couldn’t even lip read all that well yet. Jim sniffled.

 

“Don’ wan go.” The sentence was probably bad, he thought, probably incomprehensible. Little Jim still couldn’t get over the strangeness of the hum in his vocal chords or the weird things he had to do with his mouth when speaking. It’d taken day of just feeling Nichelle’s face and watching when she spoke to get just a few consonants down.

 

She shifted so she was in front of him, looking down with her pretty chocolate eyes. She spoke, but used her hands to help him out with a few of the longer words. “I have a daughter a bit older than you and she didn’t want to go to school for a while either. She insisted she was happier at home with me. Do you know what I told her?”

 

Jim shook his head.

 

“I told her that school would help her learn about the world, and someday the world would open up to her and she could do whatever she liked. Don’t you want the world to open up for you, Jimmy?”

 

Jimmy didn’t shut his eyes - Nichelle always knew what to say to persuade him (hence why he’d actually sat through all those lessons) and she’d struck the right place this time. Jim’s stomach gave of familiar funny twist. Of course he wanted the world to open up! To be able to understand, to connect, that was what he’d always wanted.

 

_“To do that you need to go to school, and to go to school you need to learn this.’_

 

Jim nodded and buried his face in her waiting, warm shoulder.

* * *

  

School wasn’t as bad as he thought it’d be. Mom led him through the halls with one hand clenched on his and into a room with rows upon rows of computers and a smiley man in the front. While Mom talked to the smiley man Jim looked around at the kids still filing in. The kids were light, dark and in between. Most were human, but there was one boy with blue skin and Jim saw a couple of short kids with protruding almond-shaped orbs for eyes. They looked like humanoids from one of the medical PADDs he’d pilfered from Jacob’s bag last time he came to visit. Jim winced - he hadn’t remembered to put it back before the doctor left, so he could imagine the reaming he was going to get. That anger-disappointment thing Jake could do with just his eyes made Jim wilt in shame at the mere thought.

 

A boy near the front was staring at him. Jimmy felt the gaze and when he turned, the boy sent him a shy grin. Jim hesitantly smiled back. Then Mom let go of his hand. Puzzled, he looked up to see her shooing him to the very front row, next to the boy. The smiley man, apparently the teacher, also ushered him there. With great hesitation and measured steps he maneuvered through the desks toward the boy. When Jim finally caught a glimpse of the boy’s touchscreen he saw _Gary Mitchell_ written on it, and next to his seat was _James Kirk_ , his name. The boy must be Gary, then. The boy smiled again and Jim returned it. His eyes followed Mom as she left the room without looking back. Jim ignored the new heavy feeling that settled over him, turning back to the screen and waiting for everyone to arrive. He didn’t pay attention to what the smiley man said, just waited. Eventually his screen cleared of his name and two letters with lines appeared.

 

_A, a._

Jim grinned. Maybe school wouldn’t be so hard after all.

  

* * *

 

Jim’s favorite handsign was one Sam hated. Well, not hated, exactly...Jimmy mostly just used it because it embarrassed Sam. He’d flash it during recess when Sam played with him on the swings instead of ditching him for his friends, and it never failed to make him turn bright red.

 

His thumb, index and pinky fingers extended while his middle and ring fingers stayed tucked tight. It meant _‘I love you,’_ and Jim really meant it. Sam was the coolest big brother in the whole universe! He played music for Jim when Mom went out, so loud that the beat of the bass thrummed through the floor and walls. They’d jump on the couches and Sam would do what he called “singing along.” He taught Jimmy how to headbang to the beat, and they both would do that until they were red in the face and they collapsed on the floor in exhaustion. Jimmy liked to laugh with Sam - it made him feel light and happy and his brother didn’t make fun of him for sounding weird, unlike some of the kids at school that Jim had learned very quickly to ignore.

 

Jim loved Sam the most when he had nightmares of bright lights and pale, scary tattooed faces, because he could creep into Sam’s room and his brother would move over for him. As they shared the bed, Sam would tell stories with his hands so they didn’t wake Mom. Jim like the stories about space best because they included wild gestures and Sam pointing out all sorts of different stars through the window. 

 

Tonight the story was about how the dinosaurs had all died from dust when a meteor crashed into Earth ( _‘Don’t worry, Jim! We won’t die from that because Starfleet would just blow it up before it got to us)_. Sam fell asleep before he did, so Jim just lay there, taking in the reassuring pound of his big brother’s heart as his hand curled into an _‘I love you’_ on the boy’s chest. Jim yawned, sinking into sleep.

 

_When I grow up, I want to go find a planet with dinosaurs..._

* * *

 

“Jake!” The word was clearly enunciated and definitely excited. Jacob had just enough time to grin before a blond blur crashed into him and trapped his waist in an exuberant hug.  When he returned it Jim finally pulled away. The little boy’s hands fluttered in sloppy signs, telling him about his friend Gary’s new virtual reality game and how fun it was, his teacher’s decision to advance Jim a grade because he was doing so wonderfully in the academic side of his schooling, and Sam’s prospective pet Labrador puppy from the neighbor’s brood a few miles down the road.

 

Jacob followed the bouncing boy inside, smiling when Jim brought him to the living room of the ancient farmhouse where Sam was already waiting. Sam bound to his feet when he saw him, nearly bowling him over in surprise.

 

“Jeez, you’ve grown nearly a foot since I last saw you, Sam! How old are you now?” he set his traveling bag carefully down beside the couch.

 

“Thirteen! Trust me, it’s all from the sweet corn we still got stored in the freezer from last year. What did you bring us?” the teenager was nearly as bouncy as the eight-year-old by his side. Jacob raised his brows.

 

“What, no ‘Hi Jake, how was the mission?’ Just, ‘What did you bring us?’” he snarked, no real bite behind the words. Both boys just stared at him pleadingly. He sighed. “Where’s your mother?” Usually she’d have walked through the room at least once to glare at him by this point.

 

Sam looked away. “She’s out.” _Again_ , went unsaid, hanging over them like a storm cloud. Jacob sighed but knew not to push it - he was more than used to finding the boys home alone, no matter how unhealthy it was for the children. If Winona were anyone else, if she weren’t the widow of _the_ George Kirk, he would be able to do something to help the children, to get them out of this lonely, isolated and unsupportive house. As it was, the corruption of his fellow humans was infinite and Winona and her children were still cloaked from scrutiny by society’s respect for a dead hero.

 

Jacob reached into his bag and pulled out a box a bit bigger than his head, though considerably flatter. He passed it to the teen, who opened it eagerly, then held it with wide eyes.

 

“No _way_ , you actually found a Playstation 6?! I didn’t think those were even around anymore - and games, too!” he gaped.

 

Jacob smirked, but shrugged. “It was your birthday last month, right? I figured I’d get you something good, and I found that in a junky old antique shop on my way through Des Moines.”

 

“Thanks!” Sam said, carefully carting off the game station to his room to have a crack at the ancient games on his PADD. Jacob turned to Jim, who was staring at his bag impatiently and kicking his feet against the sofa.

 

“Come here, Jim,” Jacob said, patting the couch cushion beside him. Jimmy scrambled up beside him as Jacob pulled out another box, black this time. “I had a friend help me make these especially for you, so if you ever need them replaced I’ll give you a way to contact him.” Jim face changed to confusion and stayed that way when the man opened the box. Inside the dark-lined interior were several items incredibly reminiscent of the twenty-first century.

 

 _‘What are these?’_ Jim’s hands twitched out. Jacob thought he was probably disappointed they didn’t look nearly as cool as Sam’s slim gift. He pulled out a pair of glasses that had been nestled carefully in the synthetic cloth.

 

“Put them on,” he instructed the boy. Jim hesitantly did as he was told. They fit as well as could be expected, given the roughness of the Jacob’s estimates during their construction. Glasses were a rare thing since the development of Rentax 5, and the only people seen wearing them nowadays were those allergic to the injection who didn’t bother with contacts. Jacob pulled out an object resembling a watch and punched in a simple button sequence.

 

“What do you see now?” Jacob was extremely gratified when Jimmy’s jaw fell open.

 

 _‘I...see your words!’_ “Wow,” escaped the boy’s mouth, making him start. Jacob felt the need to explain his device to the boy. He held up the wristwatch-thing, trying to think of the simplest terms possible without all the technical explanations that even he barely understood. Jimmy was smart, but he didn’t want to confuse him with too much newness at once.

 

“This receives all speech around you up to a certain radius and sends it to the glasses in written form, where you can see the words floating in front of you. I tried to make the text small enough not to be distracting, and the smaller the words, the farther the person is from you.” Jacob paused, watching Jim. The boy seemed to be staring off into space in fascination, watching Jacob’s words literally scroll before his eyes. Jacob had made sure even Jim’s speech would be picked up by the receiver, so he would know whether he was pronouncing words properly and the like. Yes, the look of pure wonder on the boy’s face was doing nothing to smother Jacob’s quickly inflating sense of pride and accomplishment.

 

However, he wasn’t done. He pulled out a tiny plastic case, through which he could see two even smaller clear lenses. One side of each was totally clear, while the other flashed in the pattern of an infinitesimal microchip. These contacts would serve the same purpose as the glasses, he explained to Jim. They weren’t as obvious, though a bit harder to maintain. Jimmy was looking a bit lost by the time he finally shut his mouth.

 

“I...” Jim swallowed, staring down through glass panes at the receiver cradled in small palms. “Thank...you.”

 

Jacob smiled appreciating the effort the boy went through to speak. “You’re welcome.” He set the box down and helped Jimmy strap the receiver onto his wrist. “Now, let’s go see what you’re brother’s slaying with that Playstation, huh?”

 

Hours later found Jacob standing at the edge of the driveway as two boys stared at him with doe eyes. Jacob shook his head and ruffled the short one’s hair. Jim peered up at him through his new lenses. “Have a good night, Jimmy.” He gave each boy a hug though Sam squirmed; probably thinking he was too old for such things. “Enjoy your gifts, boys. I’ll see you in a few weeks!” The Kirk boys waved, and Jacob waved back out of the taxi that would take him to the shuttle station.

 

They never saw him again.

 

* * *

 

“Gen?” She paused in zipping her uniform, turning to where her husband lay back on the bed. Alpha shift started in ten minutes and she had to get going; however, her husband had been working himself into the ground the last few days with the sudden bout of Andorian Space Flu taking over the ship. He looked haggard and pale, and his narrow eyes were puffy from lack of sleep.

 

“Yes, Jake? What is it?” She stepped closer, lacing her fingers through his human ones and reveling in the heat against her cooler temperature. Silence reigned for a moment, then Jacob smiled tiredly.

 

“Nothing, honey. Good luck today. Love you.” Gen felt a wave of tenderness well up within her, and she leaned down to kiss him tenderly.

 

“Love you, too. Sleep well.” She pulled her hand from his and quietly left the dim room. Later, she would remember the tiny prick of dark foreboding she felt as the door hissed shut. ‘Sleep well’ wasn’t supposed to mean ‘goodbye.’


	3. Formative Years, Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Everything Seems to Fall Apart

It was supposed to be a routine transit, merely taking supplies to the colony on the outer reaches of Nebulon V space, but solar flares of unpredictable strength from a nearby star hit the ship mid-flight. The freighter’s moderate shields held for the most part, the hull receiving only light damage on the decks containing officer barracks. Among the limited casualties of the area was one Jacob Ono, resting during the busy Alpha shift to recover from exhaustion. He was one of only ten on the freighter to die.

 

Jim didn’t speak to anyone for three weeks after they received the message on their comm. Even Nichelle’s kind hands and kinder eyes failed to give him any consolation. He slept in Sam’s bed every night, and the bigger boy clutched him back desperately through the pain and loss of the only person close to a father either could remember.

 

Mom seemed completely unaffected, too distracted in her own distant way to notice the pain of her sons. Her apathy hurt more than the little boy could express with words or hands. Jimmy wanted hugs, kisses, anything from Mom that said “it’ll be okay,” and Jim would selfishly believe her. She didn’t touch him, didn’t look Sam or him in the eyes when she did deign to speak. She didn’t try to use Jim’s handsigns, forcing the boy to use his glasses just to understand her.

 

Nichelle was a constant stream of caresses and sad eyes but she came over less often, dividing her time between Jim, her teaching duties, and comforting her second-cousin for the loss of her husband. Jimmy didn’t care - she wasn’t Mom, she couldn’t make him happy like Mom did when she smiled.

 

One day Nichelle offered to take Jim to visit Jake’s wife. He kind of wanted to go - Jake had talked about Gen a lot, about how pretty and nice and smart she was, and had promised to introduce her someday. She took the idea to Mom, and Jim waited tensely, expectant from the moment she raised her head. Mom looked at them both with a hooded, blank gaze and spoke three words that stabbed at his heart and made tears burn in his eyes.

 

“I don’t care.”

 

Jim shut himself in his room and didn’t come out until Nichelle left. She came back thrice more that month, trying to speak with him. Jim took off his glasses and wouldn’t look at her, no matter what she said. He let her apologies wash over him, ignored them in favor of the embers of anger and slowly-growing desperation in the pit of his stomach. She tried for another month with the same results. She didn’t come back after that.

 

* * *

 

Jim was nine the first time someone mentioned how much he looked like his father. When they came home from school Mom broke down crying and wouldn’t look at him.

 

For the first time it occurred to Jim to wonder just what sort of man his father was. They had no holopics in the house, no sign of any father that he could recall. So Jim asked _‘Who was Dad?’_ His answer was a solemn look and Sam fiddling with a PADD. A moment later he handed it to Jim, with all the information anyone would ever need to know on George Kirk. For the first time Jim started to comprehend what being the son of the man really meant - George Kirk had sacrificed his life to save him and Mom, and somehow Jim had to uphold that legacy. The weight of the realization made him wish he hadn’t asked.

 

Two months later, Mom married a man named Frank.

* * *

 

A little less than half a year after her marriage to their stepfather, Mom had left him and Jim. Sam frowned and spit in the dirt, the red tint of his saliva only turning his frown into a scowl.

 

She had no idea what sort of monster she’d married. Sam had screamed at her when he found out about her commission into Starfleet. “How could you _leave us?_ Don’t you _care_? What about Jim? He needs you-” but the problem was that she _didn’t_ care, she was too far gone to care, and it was Sam’s job to protect little Jimmy from the fiend she’d brought into their house. The big man was fierce, short-of-temper, and close-minded. He was one of the people who thought that shouting loud and long enough would get the point across - would make Jim hear and Sam obey.

 

Jim was too old to be sleeping in his bed anymore, but Sam wanted him to - so he could wake up in the morning and know that Jim was alright, that their stepfather still hadn’t turned his little brother into a rainbow of bruises. One of these days, Frank was going to go too far. One day he wouldn’t look at Sam anymore and might try to hit Jim.

 

The man would never understand that Jim was just different, not worthless or a freak of a little boy.

 

And when Frank did that, Sam wasn’t going to be held accountable for protecting the only person in the world with any worth to him. Sam loved Jim, and he wanted to make sure his little brother stayed safe.

* * *

 

Jim was eleven years old when his brother died.

 

Golden cornstalks rippled before him, dried by the fall sun that beat down on his skin, trying to burn him - to hurt him more than he was already hurt. Jim dug his fingers into the jar of powdery stolen ashes and wished the world didn’t exist.

 

Jim should have fought harder. But fighting - standing up to Frank - was what had gotten Sam sent to their aunt on Tarsus IV in the first place.

 

Mom came home, finally, for this. Her eldest son’s funeral. _Funny how she didn’t care before._ She didn’t let Jimmy see the body, or take some small measure of comfort in knowing whether starvation or desperate murder had killed the last person he cared about.

 

The heat in Jim’s eyes blurred the corn and the ground into a mass of gold, and he dug unshod feet into the cracked earth to steady himself. The dirt was parched and dry. Jim felt the wind whip his hair and was slammed by the memory of Sam, bright eyed and alive, trying to teach him the sound the wind made with fish-lips and raised eyebrows. He’d never gotten it.

 

Fighting back a tremor, Jim opened the jar, turning it so that the body of his brother mingled with brown earth and air and blew away...

 

Mom was leaving again tomorrow - she might just kill him when she found out what Jim had done, but he didn’t care. His brother deserved to be under the sky, not cramped in an urn or whatever else she’d planned. The boy roiled with rage, the despair of his loss slowly overcome by anger - at Mom, for abandoning them, at Frank for sending away the most important person in his life to die, at Sam, for taking Jim’s heart with him when he went.

 

And at himself too, because he could have gone, could have followed his brother into space and the oblivion of death.

 

Jim tilted his face toward Earth and suddenly didn’t feel like the blue sky and burning sun were home anymore.

* * *

 

Jim waited for two weeks after Sam’s service. The first time Frank hit him, Jim drove his prized antique car into the quarry. It was only the miracle of adrenaline rush that he didn’t follow it.

 

Jim spent a week in juvie before Mom dragged herself planetside to bail him out. During the week he fought with bigger boys and got thrown in solitary. Twice. Maybe it was supposed to break him, but Jim had spent his life in silence and being alone made no impact anymore. He liked it there - no one was there to judge him or his bruises or the gashes on his palms from dangling off the cliff. He’d hidden them because he wanted to _remember this_ , dammit, and medical would seal them away with just a minute of dermal regeneration.

 

He lay back on his cot, remembering the roar of the engine against his skin and the wind in his hair. Maybe wind was always going to remind him of Sam, now...

 

He stared at the ancient cracked plaster of the ceiling and wondered if it held the answers to life, the universe, and everything. Jimmy grinned, wincing at his split lip, as he counted forty-two missing chinks in the plaster. Perhaps he was a bit cracked, himself.

* * *

 

Two weeks later, Jim punched his almost-sorta-not-really friend Gary in the nose.

 

He’d been tinkering with the transmitter again - the product of hours locked in his room with nothing to do but keep his head down out of Frank’s way. The watch-like device was now very sensitive, spitting words he could barely see into his vision from speakers across the room. In hindsight Jimmy didn’t really remember what it was that set him off. It was one of those snide, self-elevating remarks that were made to make someone seem cool, but really got no one anywhere in the end.

 

Something about the dead older brother of the deaf kid, he recalled as he slouched in the principal’s office. It didn’t really matter in the end. What was important was the searing anger he’d felt - the rush that made him feel more alive than he had since the fog of his brother’s death settled over him. Jim’s hands shook as he recalled the snap of breaking bone and torn cartilage.

 

He did not apologize to the principal, or to Gary, or to his pseudo-stepfather Frank when he was called to pick Jim up. He merely stared at his hands, with the little red smear of blood on his knuckles, and contemplated in silence.

* * *

 

Jim lived with it all - fought, but kept his head down around Frank. The man never hit him again after the car incident, but he sure as hell knew how to make the boy’s life miserable. He stayed away from the house as much as he could, spending hours in the fields and crags of Iowa’s terrain.

 

Jim ignored the other kids at school - he was already two grades ahead at thirteen, a high school sophomore amid older students. Jim ignored their comments; they thought because he was deaf he never knew what they were saying. He didn’t bother to explain the glasses or contacts, content to let them live in their ignorance. He didn’t need them.

 

On Jim’s fourteenth birthday Frank hit Mom for the first time. Jim didn’t see it, didn’t know just what was happening until he walked into the room and words streamed onto his vision.

 

“You’re such a _bitch_ , Winona!” She didn’t move or try to fight him in any way. The first slap caught her full across the face before Jim was across the room, one childish hand catching hold of the balding man’s meaty one. Frank’s expression of pure astonishment did nothing to sway Jim’s sense of flat rage. His Mom was not a good mother, but she was the only thing Jim had left and he would be damned if he let this man hurt that.

 

“Frank.” The word made everyone in the room start - Jim couldn’t remember if he’d ever said the man’s name aloud before, and these days he hardly talked at all. “Get...tee fuck outta’ my house.” He was just a short kid, and Jim knew his words couldn’t have been very loud, not with how his throat hurt from speaking at all. Nonetheless the words made the man pale.

 

They made him leave. But that could have been due to the murderous look in Jim eyes, a look that said _‘or I will kill you.’_ Jim sighed, turning to Mom, who leaned against the countertop and still wouldn’t look at him. Jim left, heading upstairs, passing Sam’s room (what would always _be_ Sam’s room) and went to bed early.

 

Mom filed the divorce papers the next day.

* * *

 

Life went on, painful and slow. Jim grew older, got a motorbike that hummed and roared under his body. Women were attracted to his difference; found his deafness a point of fascination. He kissed a girl, had sex with her. He never called it ‘making love,’ even in his own head. They just seemed to be...there. Jim graduated high school.

 

He spat in a Starfleet recruiter’s face.

 

He tinkered with the transmitter, uploading more languages and testing the limits of its storage capacity. He’d never gotten the help of its creator, but the technology was surprisingly easy to puzzle out. He programmed several dialects of Betazoidian, Vulcan, and Andorian, pilfered from a drunken Starfleet officer’s universal translator.

 

Life went on, but everything was a blur until he met an arrogant, half-familiar dark woman at a bar.


	4. Transitions

The pulse of loud music throbbed through the soles of his feet and the bar seat where Jim sat hunched in a corner. A crowd of bodies pressed around him, grinding or generally bumping. Jim felt a bit overwhelmed, but that was okay, it was normal. Here he was just another person, a pretty face in a sea of others where no one cared about differences, race, or species. Jim liked to lose himself like this once in a while.

 

He motioned to Gil, the bartender and owner, for another drink. Gil raised an eyebrow but complied in a jiffy, placing a bright yellow Cardassian Sunrise on the polished wood-imitation bar before him. Jim and Gil had an agreement: Jim refrained from getting into any brawls in his place, and Gil’s club would continue being the only bar in the entire county that wouldn’t boot him out on his ass the moment they recognized his face. He grinned and gulped at the froth spilling over the lip of the glass - who cared if it was a girly drink when the tang of the sugary-ice and alcohol felt so good on his tongue? The “manly” men with their beer and hard liquor could get bent.

 

The Sunrise was cooling, but not enough to stop sweat from forming on his brow. Jim nudged the glasses back up his nose from where they’d been slowly slipping. He’d had a headache before he even walked into the joint, and the mild irritation of contacts wasn’t something he’d wanted to deal with tonight. He leaned forward on his elbows, basking in the flashing lights and watching projected words stream in front of him. If Jim saw their mouths moving, he could often match a person to the words. A couple of women at the corner of the bar were speaking in what appeared to be rapid, very dirty Esperanto, giggling over their drinks and sliding their hands up each other’s shirts. There was a person beside him who appeared to be male, covered with long brown fur and wearing nothing but a utility belt slung over one shoulder. He spoke something Jim didn’t recognize, and only translated as a phonetic “Ooooh” on his projector. Jim spared a mild glare at his wrist translator.

 

 _Looks like I’ll have to update the damn thing_ again.

 

It wasn’t as if he didn’t have the time to buy and modify another language packet, it was just the matter of money. Currently, Jim was broke as a bum. The last of his credits had been spent on a fairly pricey ‘just for fun’ Klingon software download and the drink he held in his hand. Maybe he could pilfer another drunken cadet’s translator; gods only knew there were enough of them in the room for easy pickings...the thought made him grimace.

 

Then _she_ walked into the bar. Dear God, it was like a bad joke even in his head, but she was all long legs in tall boots and a high ponytail and dusky brown skin that slammed into Jim like the hardest case of deja vu he’d ever experienced. Jim blinked slowly as she sat down, dazed. Why was he getting all worked up over one woman? He hadn’t felt as agitated by anyone in years. He spent another moment examining her face while she perused the drink menu. She...was so familiar it hurt, but Jim was 99.9 percent certain he’d never seen her before in his life. He _had_ to find out her name - maybe it would ring a few bells.

 

Jim’s gaze dropped to her chest. Well, it wouldn’t hurt if he got a piece of _that_ too.

* * *

 

Nyota knew something was …different about the man the moment she saw him. His thin-rimmed glasses were the first sign (because really, who _wore_ glasses these days), but they weren’t the jist of it. Then he opened his mouth and the wrongness turned into a desperate itch under her skin. Half of her training in Starfleet amounted to observing people (she’d passed Accent and Body Language Identification with flying colors), and the way he shaped words immediately stood out from those around him. Nyota felt her curiosity piqued despite herself, and it compelled her to answer his first question.

 

“My name is Uhura.” She fought back a tiny smirk.

 

“They don’t have last names on your planet?”

 

“Uhura is my last name.” She took a small sip of her Budweiser Classic, watching the stranger do the same before sending her a crooked smile. Then he seemed to remember himself.

 

“Sorry, my name is Jim. So you’re in Starfleet?” There it was. She watched the form of his lips, aware of the careful way he enunciated each word. Nonetheless, his repeated ‘s’s revealed a slight lisp - a drag on the consonant which this “Jim” didn’t seem to be aware of. In the following pause, Nyota pulled out of her observation to reply to the somewhat stupid question. She _was_ wearing a cadet uniform, after all. Her opinion of the man dropped by a large margin.

 

“Yes. I’m studying xenolinguistics, not that you know what that means-”

 

“Study of alien languages. Morphology, phonology, and syntax,” the blonde man replied with another crooked smile and more lisps.

 

…Perhaps her initial estimation of his intelligence was unfounded. She snorted, not caring how unladylike the sound made her. “Hmm, and here I thought you were just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals.”

 

The heat of the room getting the better of her, Nyota took another long pull on the beer. Jim didn’t seem to be as offended by her comment as she had expected. His grin broadened, looking more amused than anything.

 

“Well, not _just_ farm animals. Truly though, I have to have something to do when I’m not out wreaking havoc. Languages just happen to be a hobby of mine.”

 

Nyota didn’t bother to hide her irritation and disbelief. Did this guy think he could get into her pants just by pretending they shared an interest? “ _NaDevvo' yIghoS_ ,” she said in blunt Klingon, knowing it would be futile if the man was pretending. Normally she wouldn’t be so rude, but if she hated one thing, it was a fake.

 

Jim frowned in what appeared to be frustration, but his face held no confusion. He downed the last of his glass and slid off the barstool. “Didn’t mean to bother you.” His hands jerked and Nyota flinched in surprise, not expecting what he did next. _‘Sorry. Just wanted to learn your name.’_ His hands fell and he turned away.

 

“Wait!” she called before she even registered opening her mouth. The blond man hadn’t taken more than a step away, so when he turned Nyota was met with the full power of piercing blue eyes behind two thin panes of glass. _‘You know Standard Sign Language?’_ she signed slowly, fully aware of her mistake in making assumptions about this man. Even now his sent her a wan smile that seemed more real than those before it, like she really had been staring at a pretender earlier and this smaller, golden man before her was the genuine article.

 

 _‘I learned SSL before Standard,’_ he said, stepping closer. _‘A very kind woman taught me when I was young.’_ With those signs Jim’s eyebrows seemed to scrunch up in a sudden realization.

 

Nyota felt her own eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but before she could formulate the important question as to _why_ , someone set a heavy hand on Jim’s shoulder and spun him around. Of course, it was the chauvinistic Giotto and his little gang.

 

“This guy bothering you, Uhura?” the red-clad man said. She willed her face to calmness before it could morph into a scowl – the male cadets here with her were far too overloaded with testosterone for their own good.

 

“No, he’s not. I can take care of myself, thanks.”

 

Jim brushed Cadet Giotto’s hand away with a smile. It was the same ‘pretender’ smile she recognized from earlier. “You heard her. She can take care of herself, so clear out, cupcake.” Nyota watched Giotto scowl and turn red as Jim turned back to face her. And even as he raised a fist she knew exactly where the situation was going. _Kinyeshi… This is going to get ugly._

 

The first punch shattered Jim’s glasses.

* * *

 

Jim knew he should’ve stepped back. Hell, he knew that his words would lead to provoking a fight, but he couldn’t help himself. Especially after “Cupcake” had shattered his glasses into tiny bits.

 

Gil was glaring at him from behind the bar, letting him know without words or hand gestures that he wouldn’t be welcome back after tonight. Thankfully he’d given Jim a break, letting him recover at a small table with a drink in hand, tissue up his nose, and the crushed frames of his glasses lying forlornly on the table next to a pair of starship salt-and-pepper shakers. Jim stared down at the lenses, already trying to work out just where he’d get new projector chips and frames with no credits to his name. Usually he wore the contacts if he felt in the mood for a brawl…

 

He resolutely ignored the man who slid into the chair across from him. The Starfleet Captain had probably saved Jim from another near-death experience; as loathe as he was to admit it, he’d gotten in over his head. He ran a finger over the jagged edge of a lens before he finally looked up. The wizened man stared at him silently, which was good because Jim wouldn’t have seen him talking anyway. He vaguely recognized the man’s visage from some news cast, and with a small effort Jim placed a name with the face.

 

“I couldn’t believe it when the bartender told me who you are,” the old man said. It was hard to read his lips between the fuzz of the alcohol and the loss of his projectors, which Jim had come to rely on for communication with those who didn’t know SSL. Nonetheless, he managed to catch the gist of what the man was saying. He threw a glance at Gil and the bartender scowled back. Jim leaned back with a sigh and put his glass down.

 

“Who am I, Captain Pike?” If Pike was surprised that Jim knew his name, he didn’t show it.

 

“You’re your father’s son.”

 

Jim bit back the sarcastic “No, _really_?” scrabbling at his throat and settled for watching the man speak.

 

“For my dissertation, I was assigned the _U.S.S. Kelvin_. Something I admired about your dad... he didn't believe in no-win scenarios.”

 

“He sure learned _his_ lesson,” Jim snorted.

 

“Depends on how you define winning. You’re here, aren’t you?”

 

Jim’s mind jumped to a day years ago, when he’d been just a little boy asking his who his father was. The price of his curiosity had been a loss of innocence, a loss of the belief that his life was his own; it had been paid for by his father. Adding George Kirk’s death to that of Jake’s – when both men were serving in the force – had probably been what set him against Starfleet in the first place. Jim squeezed his eyes shut, trying to evade the inevitable pain his memories caused. In doing so he missed Pike’s next words, only gaining a headache and a questioning stare from said man.

 

“Why are you talking to me?” he finally dragged the words out, finishing the glass of alcohol on the table without really paying attention to what it was anymore. This guy was kind of irritating, talking to Jim about his Dad like he’d really known the man – like he really knew Jim. All the young man really wanted to do was go back to his cheap board room and crash.

 

Pike’s face was lined earnestly. “I looked up your file while you were drooling on the floor. Your aptitude tests are off the charts. You could be anything, anybody. Or do you like being the only genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest?”

 

With those words, Jim’s sparking irritation blew up into outright anger. In another world, a different time, he might have let Pike’s words roll off his back with nothing more than a snide comment to acknowledge their passing. As it was, the question touched something inside him he hadn’t known existed until it bubbled up his throat like hot bile.

 

Jim glared stiffly, watching Pike flinch dramatically as his glass careened off the edge of the table and hit the ground with what was no doubt a deafening smash. Funny how lack of sound cut down on withdrawal reflexes. Jim neither jerked when the glass smashed nor cringed when he met the full force of Pike’s half-startled, half-angry glare.

 

“You don’t understand,” the words pushed from his brain to his lips with little conscious thought. “You and the whole fucking Federation think you’ve got fairness and equality all down pat. You can be Andorian or Orion or fucking _Vulcan-_ ” here Jim paused, trying to get a grip on his slurs around a drunken mouth and blurry vision that couldn’t quite register Pike’s expressions. “You can be anything and get a job. But when you’re human – black or white or omni or poor – they expect you to be a fucking perfect human.”

 

Pike’s mouth was moving, saying something, and Jim could feel the weight of Gil’s dark glare prickling the back of his neck. He was going to have to pay for the glass, but Jim’s mind was lightyears away from finances right now. Starfleet just didn’t understand the little flaws in the system they’d built. Earth took pride in being an ‘equal opportunity for all’ planet, but the flaws of the human race were too deeply seated, too intricately entwined with their very genetics to ever be completely eradicated.

 

Jim had been thinking about this for a long time.

 

Still ignoring whatever Pike was trying to say, Jim pried his hands from their death-grip on the table’s edge and asked the man, “Did you look at my _medical_ file, Captain Pike?” He didn’t wait for a reply, already seeing the negative answer in the widening of the man’s eyes and the twitch in the tendons of his neck.

 

“I went to school to be a doctor once. They told me I couldn’t communicate clearly enough with patients to diagnose them or even treat them. And what the hell good would I be as an engineer if I can’t even hear the fucking warning alarms going off? ‘Cause all it takes is once.” Jim leaned back in his seat, meeting the stunned gaze of one of Starfleet’s most commended officers. “When you’re human, they expect you to be a fucking _perfect_ human, Captain Pike, and sad little deaf boys don’t count. So this-” he flung his arms out, nearly knocking his drunk ass out of his chair in the process, “this genius repeat offender thing? It’s all I’ve got.” Hands laced together behind his head, cradling his scalp as Jim stared through hooded eyes at Pike, who seemed totally incapacitated by shock. Jim merely felt weary to the bone. This night had gone on far too long.

 

He sighed, repeating a question still left unanswered. “Why are you talking to me, Pike?” They both sat silent for a moment, one in a haze of astonishment and racing thoughts, the other simply wishing to get the moment over with. He was tired of talking about his failing shadow of a life.

 

Suddenly the captain sat forward, eyes earnest and a hand coming to rest over the wrist Jim had let drop to the table. Jim stiffened but did not move, watching warily as the older man’s eyes filled with a hard determination and his lips moved to speak.

 

“You’re right,” Pike’s words nearly made Jim jerk out of the man’s grasp. “The Federation has stagnated – we’ve gotten too complacent in our doctrine of equality and superiority over the prejudiced… Enlist in Starfleet, Kirk, and I’ll help you shake up the universe.”

 

Somehow, the fire that had taken hold of Pike’s eyes made Jim pause in his knee-jerk reaction against all mentions of Starfleet. His genius head raced even through the alcohol, his mind screaming with the possibilities as his gaze engaged in a fierce, silent judgment with the Captain’s. Jim swallowed and spoke a moment later.

 

He didn’t refuse.


	5. Academy Years, part I

Through a small dusty window, the darkness before dawn was beginning to lift. Jim stared at his small pile of knickknacks on an equally dusty bed, refusing to think about how he hadn’t slept all night and in just a few hours he’d be heading out to keep an agreement he’d been _entirely_ too drunk and beaten to make in all seriousness.

 

Except that he had.

 

Jim dislodged one object amidst a stack of other slate-colored PADDs. He gently removed it from the pile, fingers barely brushing over worn finish and a cracked screen fraught with memories. Digits danced in a steady sequence and a soft glow spread over the screen, which filled with writing and diagrams looked over and painstakingly memorized more times than Jim cared to count.

 

As a child, Jim had gotten into the habit of stealing whatever Jake happened to have in his bag when he came to visit, studying it, and stealthily returning it the next time his favorite adult visited. In this manner, Jim learned about architecture, Vulcan poetry, xenobiology, and finer points of Dante’s journey through Hell, never suspecting at the time that Jake watched him out of the corner of his eye with a secretive smile. The last PADD he’d snitched from the man’s bag had been part textbook, part Dr. Ono’s medical journal, but he’d forgotten it in the excitement of receiving his projector glasses…then he’d never had a chance to give it back.

 

All-too-familiar writing scrolled across the screen, burning and blurring in Jim’s eyes. Jacob Ono had been both a pain and inspiration, motivating Jim to study medicine in order to help others and make as much difference in their lives as the doctor had in Jim’s. But he’d been cut off – if someone told James Tiberius Kirk that he didn’t have the determination or compassion it took to become a good doctor, he would have proven them wrong – but someone told Jim that he didn’t have the _ability_ to communicate or listen. They hit him where his tiny kernel of weakness resided, crushing his resolve in one fell blow.

 

Jim sighed, turning the gadget off and stuffing it in a small knapsack, followed by the small pile on the bed. This time, there would be nothing to stand in Jim’s way.

 

 

 

He was going to prove them all wrong.

 

* * *

 

 

Captain Christopher Pike blames his enthusiasm on being punch-drunk. He was _not_ so excitable because he was redirecting anger at the cadets for sneaking off to a bar against regulations, and _definitely_ not because he was riding a high from – at last – finding George Kirk’s elusive son. He was just over-tired, that was all.

 

But Chris was never one to go back on his word, and he genuinely wanted to see what the son George had died for was worth… and he wanted to be the first to give Jim a chance at a real life. Already he had ideas sparking off in his brain. He’d seen the glint of keen intelligence in Kirk’s eye, and if he could just pull a few strings at the academy that would feed that intelligence…well.

 

_‘Shake up the universe,’ indeed._

 

 

 

Fighting back a smirk, Christopher stilled his tapping toe and continued to watch the shuttle preparations under the rising Iowa sun.

 

* * *

 

Jim swung off the bike that roared so wonderfully, tossing the keycard to the first maintenance guy who gave the bike what he deemed was a suitably appreciative look. “It’s yours,” he said to the man’s shock, turning away and hefting the sack of things he just couldn’t leave behind over his shoulder. It was very light.

 

As he half-expected, Pike was waiting for him by the shuttle’s entrance. “You’re early.” The man’s raised eyebrows displayed surprise even as the words filtered into sight via Jim’s contacts.

 

“What, you expected me to get here late? I’m hurt, Captain Pike,” flowed with an easy grin. Already there was a strange familiarity between them that belied their first meeting the night before. The banter felt…comfortable, even if Jim had to take care forming his words.

 

“I expected you to arrive by the skin of your teeth,” Pike returned the smile, his gaze sweeping over Jim’s rather drab clothing. “I see you cleaned yourself up.”

 

Jim shrugged, “Just ‘cause blood stained my clothes doesn’t mean I shouldn’t get it off my face.”

 

“Yes, because God forbid blood should mar your looks – I think the bruises do that job well enough,” Pike smirked, rolling his eyes. “Get on the shuttle, Kirk. We’ll be taking off soon.” Jim nodded, turning to go up the steps when the man stopped him with a light touch on the shoulder. “Come straight to my office when we land.”

 

The younger paused, staring into serious blue eyes, and nodded. Pike let him go and James Kirk took the first step towards his destiny…

 

His destiny was full of red-clad fidgeting people. Jim turned, trying to find an open seat, and very nearly smacked his head into a low metal beam. _Not an auspicious start…_ Jim walked gingerly after that, trying not to trip over anyone’s feet. He passed the woman from last night, _Uhura_ , his tired mind supplied. Surprise was written all over her face, but Jim felt something warm inside his chest when she graced him with a barely-there smile.

 

Jim sank into one of the few empty seats with a sigh and tucked his rucksack securely between his feet. The shuttle already bore the faint scent of tightly-packed bodies on top of oil and steel. A few minutes later, a commotion started as a stern woman in red pulled a ragged-looking man out of the shuttle toilet. She practically shoved him into the only free chair nearby – conveniently next to Jim – and stalked off. The man fumbled with the harnesses for a moment, and Jim caught a strong waft of cheap brandy when he turned to face him.

 

For a human steeped in liquor, his eyes were surprisingly sharp, though surrounded by deep rings and three-day old beard. He slurred so badly, Jim wouldn’t have been able to understand without the aid of his transmitter.

 

“I may throw up on you.”

 

Sleep deprived, hung over and troubled as he was, Jim smiled back. He understood all about drowning sorrows in alcohol.

* * *

 

Leonard McCoy wasn’t a loner by nature. For him, getting close to people and loving them wasn’t an aberration, but keeping them certainly was. People could see the weakness in him, the need to be accepted above all else, and exploit it to their whims.

 

McCoy was quick to snap, often mired in his work as guilt drove him onward, every being under his hands morphing into the father he couldn’t save. Guilt made him brittle on the inside until he crumbled under Jocelyn’s pressure like a tilting sandcastle. She ended up with full custody and the estate, leaving behind a shattered man and everyone who met him wondering what he’d done that was so terrible to end up like this.

 

Starfleet was a last effort to make something out of the shell his life had become. Practicing medicine was hard, but the only thing he knew how to do. Leonard needed to rediscover his purpose for _doing_. This didn’t mean, however, that he wanted to make friends. _I’ve had more than enough screwing over, thank you._

 

“I think these things’re pretty safe,” the kid next to him said. _Stupid, ignorant-_ He really didn’t want to spend the next decade of his life surrounded by optimistic asshats like these.

 

“Don't pander to me, kid: one tiny crack in the hull and our blood boils in thirteen seconds – solar flare might crop up, cook us in our seats. Hell, some of the damn passengers are _blue_.” The kid looked like he was going to say something, but McCoy didn’t give him a chance. “And wait'll you're sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shingles, see if you're still so relaxed when your _eyeballs_ are bleeding! Space is disease and danger, wrapped in darkness and silence.”

 

All was quiet for a long moment. Leonard’s rant had some passengers staring, and one guy across the aisle looked a little green. The blond kid was still, calm as you please.

 

Then he busted out laughing. “I’m sorry,” he said between snickers, “it’s just, there’s no good way to explain the _irony_ …” When he finally sobered, he stuck out a hand. “Jim Kirk. I’ve a feeling we’re going to get along _great_.”

 

McCoy shook it, trying to quell a sudden desperate need to guzzle all the brandy left in his bottle.

* * *

 

By the time the shuttle arrived in San Francisco, Jim had made a new friend. Of course, he used the term friend lightly, since Bones was so irritable Jim considered his mere exasperated patience a win. Pike caught his eyes as the cadets and new recruits unloaded. Jim nodded back and made to follow when Bones caught his arm.

 

“Where are you going? We have to register at the administration building-” the older man started. Jim slipped from his grip with a grin.

 

“I have an appointment. See ya later, Bones!” With that, he turned to catch up with Pike’s retreating back. After a beat, a few words filtered across his contact projectors as Bones called after him:

 

“…Don’t call me that!”

* * *

 

Pike’s office had enough room for a desk and three chairs – the rest of the space was taken up by bookshelves packed with antiquated paper books. The smell of vanillin wafting from the decomposing paper had Jim itching to take them down and read through them, much as he had run off with Jake’s PADDs so many years ago. He had to sit on his hands to control their twitching as Pike settled on the other side of the desk. Neither man spoke for a long moment until the elder leaned forward, lacing his fingers together, and spoke. “I’ve arranged for your admissions test later today. I need to know if you’ll have any trouble with the oral portion, because I can arrange an alternative method.”

 

A little taken aback by this show of concern, Jim shook his head. “I should be fine. I’ve got a lifetime’s practice at lip-reading.” That, and he didn’t really feel like explaining the intricacies of his transmitter to a man he barely knew, however sympathetic he may be to Jim’s plight.

 

“Well then, since we both know you’ll pass your exams with flying colors,” here he fixed Jim with a look, as if the younger might purposely fail just to spite him, “let’s work on your academic over the next four years. Unless you choose to change, I will be your advisor for the command track. Any questions?”

 

“Well…” Jim started.

* * *

 

“Command _and_ medicine? You’re not just stupid, you’re a lunatic!” Bones said later when Jim ran into him and told him about the meeting (and by “running into” him Jim meant “after he hunted him down.” There was no way he was going to lose track of the first friend he’d made in this godforsaken place). He shrugged. That was pretty much Pike’s initial reaction, too.

 

“I’ve got plenty of time and motivation. It’s not like I’m trying to graduate in three years, or anything.”

 

Bones shook his head. “Kid, do you have any idea how many hours of clinic duty alone are required to graduate? Also, the Medical Academy and Command are completely different schools – how are you going to schedule with so many conflicting classes?”

 

Jim shrugged again. “I’ve got an in on the scheduling thing. A lot of the command classes are mostly readings and response writing, so I only really have to show up for tests. It’s not a big deal; I’ll just be really busy. How about you? I thought you already had your M.D.”

 

“It’s all those damn xenobio requisites – Georgia doesn’t get much by way of alien traffic. And unless I take at least three years on diplomacy and space-based procedure, there’s no way to get placed where I want. Maybe I’ll be stuck on some shipping freighter between here and the M-26 quadrant. At least _there_ there’s less chance of being shot down, though there’s no accounting for hull ruptures and the like. Not to _mention_ all those blasted alien diseases contracted during space exploration missions-” Bones continued to gripe, which Jim was quickly learning was the man’s favorite activity after drinking. He neither remembered his incredulity over Jim’s life choices, nor noticed when Jim’s ever-present grin tightened at the corners.

 

* * *

 

As far as roommates went, Kevin Riley wasn’t a bad match. Like most Starfleet recruits, he was several years younger than Jim, recruited fresh out of high school and ready to take on the galaxy through sheer gall. The first thing he said after they introduced themselves and shook hands was:

 

“You remind me of someone.” Jim cocked an eyebrow in question, but Riley shook his head. “I don’t remember who, you just seem really familiar.”

 

Jim let it go. With his luck, the kid had seen some holos of his Dad in history class and was going to freak out or something once he realized just _whose_ son he was. He hoped to put off that particular moment as long as possible. Though from Pike’s reaction and the way he spoke about Dad’s accomplishments, it was likely he was going to get that response from someone sooner rather than later.

 

Still, as Jim figured out places for his meager belongings and a stack of newly-issued cadet uniforms, he caught Riley glancing at him across the dorm room once or twice, brown eyes dark to the point of haunted.

* * *

 

Jim didn’t know what to expect of Doctor Jabilo Geoffrey M’Benga. He only knew that Pike had sent him an email a day after arrival telling him to report to the doctor at Starfleet Medical. The office building was actually adjacent and connected to the hospital, so he didn’t have problems following the many signs posted around for those drunk or desperate for medical attention to follow.

 

“Enter.” Assessing eyes set in a dark face met him as he walked through the door of M’Benga’s office. Admittedly, Jim had only been half-expecting a human doctor based on first and last name alone – the middle name should have tipped him off. “Please, sit,” M’Benga gestured to a chair with his free hand, a PADD in the other. Jim sank into the ergonomic chair as the man across the desk turned his attention back to the device in his hand. A long minute passed, then two. Unlike most people, Jim had no definition for “awkward silence,” but sitting still was a pain in the ass.

 

When the third minute ticked by, Jim broke. “ _So_ …” M’Benga cut him off with one finger, and then finally looked up.

 

“Cadet Kirk, Captain Pike sent me the results of your tests and physical this morning, along with a short summary of what you’ve discussed with him, but none of this contains the most relevant information.”

 

Jim sat up. “What is that, sir?”

 

“Call me M’Benga, or Doctor. What’s so glaringly absent from these files is the _reason_ you, with no previous formal study, wish to complete a double track medical and command. There is precedent for it, but no previous cadet has completed such in a _six_ year span, let alone the four you’re projecting. I understand Pike recruited you solely for the command track, so explain to me why you are so determined to take the medical route.”

 

“Pike didn’t tell you?” Jim had already exhausted this avenue the other day – his tongue felt heavy even thinking about how much talking he’d been forced into. The captain just wasn’t sufficient enough in SSL to understand him otherwise.

 

“ _Captain_ Pike apparently thought it best for explanations to be given in person.” Such heavy emphasis was on Pike’s title that the letters appeared in all capitals on Jim’s projector. He took it for the reprimand it was and moved on to answer.

 

“There was a doctor when I was a kid – a really good guy, he was on the _Kelvin_ , there when I was born. He was the one who found…” Jim made a gesture toward his ear, and M’Benga nodded. “Jake was basically a dad to me and my br- well, he was around when Mom wasn’t. Taught me to read, found a speech therapist, and brought a different textbook every visit. I’d snatch them when he wasn’t looking – most were related to medicine. When he died…I still had his field journal, all his research and the notes he took on my condition. Even when I was too young to understand them I studied them and expanded out from there.” Jim never broke the man’s steady gaze as he spoke. “He never figured out what caused my condition, or why _Kelvin’s_ CMO never caught it. I want to go into space and find out, so no other kids have to deal with what I’ve experienced.”

 

“Very well,” M’Benga was watching him, elbows on the desk and fingers laced together. “Kirk, there are currently two non-hearing species allied with the Federation, and five addition species that hear higher or lower than human perception, two of those non-carbon based sentient life forms. You are the first deaf human admitted to the Academy, but not the first deaf species, even to Starfleet Medical. From what Captain Pike has told me you were discouraged from pursuing medical studies previously, but based on your grasp of spoken Standard and oral assessments, you should have no problems. You’ve already tested out of the majority of theory on human biology and anatomy, as well as base xenobio. I expect you will be an excellent addition to Medical, but I’m curious on the last point Pike mentioned to me.” He tapped the PADD, now dark on the desk, “Why do you want Starfleet faculty to remain uninformed about your unique circumstances?”

 

 _Unique circumstances. Never heard it put_ that _delicately before_. “I don’t want to be coddled,” Jim said aloud.

 

M’Benga frowned. “You doubt the ability of the faculty to remain professional in the face of your circumstances?”

 

Jim released a sound not unlike a snort. “A different species is one thing, but a human who can’t hear? You bet I doubt.” _And from the faculty to the students, until it’s like high school all over again_. The doctor’s frown deepened and he contemplated that in silence for a moment. Jim was relieved when he finally nodded in acceptance.

 

“You do have a point. Your application to Starfleet Medical is approved, with the note that, should your performance slip at any point, you will be removed from the program to focus solely on Command. Is that acceptable?”

 

Jim nodded, trying not to seem too eager.

 

“Right. I’ll be your advisor and eventually supervising physician when you get to practical over the next four years. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Cadet Kirk, and good luck. You’ll need it.”

 

They shook hands, and something in Jim’s chest that had coiled up on Jake’s death seemed to loosen and sigh.

 

_Finally._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live! Sorry for the short chapter. Studying abroad in Japan atm.
> 
> Lots of canon characters entering the mix. I moved up M'Benga's timeline so he could serve as a mentor. Next chapter will have Uhura, Spock, missed connections and most of the Academy years.


End file.
